Undeniable Commitments

All this while, Henry remained aloof of his brother's woes. Rupert didn't share his wife's identity with his brother. To him she was an uncouth uncultured woman who did not suit his brother. In reality Henry never did approve of the Moni just because she was thrust upon his brother by a mother who was not his own. His indifference to the woman had shown in the fact that he had never attempted to meet the woman once. With the woman gone Henry had hope for a better future for his brother even if that future not be with Monique. After the masquerade ball last autumn Monique had informed Henry of her decision to stop being Monique. It was a great void in his life to not receive the letters that he recognized to be his inspiration. He still wrote out the mails that he was so wont to. Whether they were read or not he had never found out until finally, the day arrived when he was directing a concert on Broadway in New York. Broadway mainly consisted of Jazz and Pop so the fact that the organizers had gone beyond their usual flavours and had opera only spoke of how much popular it was elsewhere.

The opera was named Monique. It was about a young orphan girl who had fallen in love with a star. Every night her brother would tell her a story of the star that shines out of the window when she goes asleep. After her brother had tucked her in, she would peek open her eyes and finding the window open sit there night after night in the hope that the star would shine its light on her. But the star was so away and so many others demanded its light. The star in all his duties never found out about the girl that was sitting up at night waiting for him to shine his light on her. Soon a big dark cloud came and hid the star from the sky. The cloud scared the girl with the rumbling thunder and the crackling lightning till one day the girl was finally so scared she placed a pillow over her head and refused to wait for her star to come out. More days passed and the cloud still hovered and the child completely forgot that there was a sky beyond. Her cloud became her sky and the lightning became her light. She started singing in tunes of thunder. All she would do is, wait for the rain, to be swept away in the all-pervading cloud, joined with him through sinless drops. The day came. Rain fell on her face one drop at a time but she never got swept away. With every falling drop, it washed away her innocence and the music and the light of her life. When she finally opened her eyes the sky was dark. The star was still there but she could not reach up to him. An insect cannot fly with wet wings and a child cannot fly with broken dreams. In came the moon and spread out its arms towards her. She said, "My clothes are all ruined and so am I. Leave me alone and get lost." The moon showed her his scarred face and told her to have pity on him. The moon was ultimately someone that the scared and scarred girl could still deserve. She made a kite of all her hopes and used it to fly and when she reached the surface of the moon she fell into one of those craters. From inside the craters, all she would see was the star that still shined for others and she would only let her heart heed her prayer, "If only you were mine."

The story was indeed of Monique and it changed with every new page written in her destiny. Henry still believed that Monique still loved his brother and all he ever wanted to do was make them meet once in their lives. It was a difficult proposition with both being so stubborn about their commitments. Still, when Monique wrote to say that she would be coming to see the show Henry started making plans in his mind. The fact that she had mentioned that a two-year-old boy would be accompanying her did not make any difference to him.

To Henry's mind, personal satisfaction was the foremost criterion. He did not care much for the bonds society had forged for its own convenience. In this matter, he differed with his brother. While Rupert felt it a privilege and responsibility to be a functional unit of society he felt no exaltation in being called righteous. The word almost sounded petty to him. Family bonds and ties did not mean as much to him as did ties of the soul. We are all human beings connected to other human beings through intellect and society. The same society, however, pushes us towards a particular set of individuals they designate our family and bind it through social rules. Beyond that small unit, the human beings are left to float free. But at times more often a being wishes to be bogged down by society in general, acknowledged for more than the roles that they are forced into playing. That defines ambition. Henry was a very ambitious person. All that mattered to him was that he should matter to others in a way he could not to his father or to his younger brother. Henry saw all other human beings as a reflection of himself and believed that all were searching for their own selfish stronghold in the hearts of others. Monique's beliefs were akin to his own, to a certain extent but while Henry placed personal satisfaction in a human interaction foremost Monique considered a balanced interaction as essential to form a connection.

Rupert had just gotten home in New York after a prolonged stay in India. His stay there had endeared him to his mother who was out of her wits ways to correct her wayward sons. His more than personal interactions with his mother had led to a bond forming between them as well. Rupert knew the pain of being abandoned by someone you had committed your entire life to and Rupert knew the agony of not being able to love a person you definitely desire unconditionally. He had lost in Moni and Monique.

Rupert knew the next thing he would do was bump into his daughter who was living alone now and then to enquire upon her. Rupert was informed of his missing grandson and he assumed that Rosaline too had followed Imli's path and given up the responsibility for adoption. Rupert would have to find the adoptive parents and get them to return what was rightfully his. He was back in New York for hardly a day when Henry called to say that Monique would be in town and he wished for them to meet. Rupert couldn't actually believe his lucky stars.

"Monique is going to be in town? When? Where?" He lamented over the phone.

"Woa... what happened to you not wanting to indulge a child's fantasy?" Henry beseeched.

"I can't tell you now but you have to arrange for us to meet and don't give her a heads up" Rupert begged.

"You want to surprise her?" Henry asked

"Of course I want to surprise her. I want to see the look on her face when you introduce me." Rupert offered.

"But you have already met. You danced and flirted."

"If you are referring to the ball after the Fashion week I danced with Monique but Monique didn't dance with your brother. She danced with a different man who worked with her in the fashion week. I never told her that I am Robert Monnet. Monique asked me my plans after the dance and I almost yielded to temptation. But ultimately mentioned to her that my wife is waiting for me." It was all true, he thought, as he narrated the incident to his brother.

"Monique is married. Your refusal tipped her balance of judgement in the favour of anonymity and she ceased her professional ambitions in favour of domestic ones. As it is she plans to bring her child along."Henry told Rupert.

The word child jarred Rupert's senses. She had refused to have a child on their first acquaintance. Was a child the reason she left him? But she did not show while they were together and if the child was already born then she should have been showing six months back.

"She couldn't get married and have a child within six months." Rupert reminded him.

"The child is her husband's in all probability but to her, it is no different from her own born. Monique has been in love with you for fifteen years. Stories about you are what connected us in the first place. Meet her once and tell her to live."

Rupert weighed Henry's words carefully. Her husband's. Hmm?

Rupert thought about having another child, another child he may not share blood with. It sounded good. And he wanted to be with his wife with or without a child.

Monique had taken a decision that was to affect many lives. She had decided to force her ward into getting a life of her own. Young Herbert was a darling. He was two years old and a perfect gentleman. Rosaline often alluded to her father when looking at Herb courtesying before their elderly guest. But it was time for Rosaline to move away from the shadow of her father and the burden of her son. The reason that Monique and Herb were there at the Opera was so that Rosaline could have a quiet date with a high school sweetheart she had got back in contact with. Rosaline had objected to their coming away all the way across the country to give them privacy. "It is only a date" she said. But that date is a start, a start that Monique may never make in her life.

Rupert was really not interested in the fairy tale that his brother passed in the name of music. He knew the drama and knew the characters. Monique was Henry's pet project and subject to change every other day. Rupert really did not care about what new change he had made. Rupert knew the connection between Monique or Madame M and Henry. She inspired his stories and did his costumes. Now he even knew that he was perhaps the star as well as the moon that the child was so enamoured by in the story. Henry had fuelled her life force and her fantasies. Rupert knew more about Monique than his brother.

Earlier Rupert did not understand was that what Monique gained from this in return. Whatever Henry could do for her had been done. Her education had been paid for, her reinstatement as a foreign national had been financed by his company. It did not take much to dig up all the money that had changed hands to Henry's muse. It was pleasing in a way to know that his brother was not loitering all his money on wine and woman or men for that matter. But Monique was a woman, a woman that both brothers desired and one desired to possess.

Shimonthini was met with a beaming Henry in the backstage. In her, seclusion Shimonthini had longed for the acknowledgement of a familiar face. That need for a connection had brought her closer to the desolate girl she was now in charge of. Henry was pleased with Monique's appearance. She was thinner but she was wearing makeup which was a far call from the Shimonnthini he had earlier witnessed. A longer look and Henry could well decipher the dark shadows under her eyes not completely hidden by the concealer.

"You are not as happy as you expected to be with your husband," Henry stated without bothering to ask her. "You long for your old life. It can't be Rishi. Is it Bert?"

Monique looked away unwilling to answer. Henry came closer and holding her chin forced her to look into his eyes. "I am not in love with a stranger Henry. Bert is nothing more than a name to me. He never was. I am in love with my husband, who is in love with my younger sister. I cannot be her. I cannot erase thirteen years of my life and regain the innocence and the simplicity of youth that I have let fade with time. I am not deserving of my husband and I do not know what to do."

"Well, now that is something," Henry exclaimed. "You never mentioned anything about your husband and your sister having an affair."

"It is really not something I feel proud to talk about. Many days back, when I was in India and just married I had seen my sister and my husband together in bed. I had two choices then. I could regret this relationship and choose to be unhappy in my marriage or I could forgive them both and try to live a respectable life, as a respectfully married woman."

"Then what made you think that you could not?" Henry asked.

"He confessed in having feelings for me. He claimed to love me, mind body and soul and I knew that it was an outright lie. I couldn't stand being lied to on my face and so I left him." Monique explained.

"You left him?" Henry asked to be sure. Monique nodded knowing that it pleased him to know that she was free from the relationship that had created a divide between them.

"Then it is a good thing I arranged your meeting with Bert. You two can get to know each other better. His wife has left him as well and my brother is miserable." Henry said.

"I don't want to meet your brother Henry. He is just a name to me and I wish it remains so. Being in love with a name, a personality almost takes away the carnality of desire from such a pure and divine thing as love. Being in love with a name I can almost say that I worship him through my adoration and idolize him through my fantasies. Bring a material body into the account and you tarnish all the holiness of love with the temptation of physical desire." Monique said.

Henry smiled to himself. It was this very temptation of Physical desire that had ruined his brother's marriage. How could one have existed without the other? If Monique never met him why did Rupert dissociate from his wife for Monique?

"You have met my brother," Henry said pointedly.

"No. I haven't and I would like it to remain so." Monique stated.

"At the London fashion week you met my brother," Henry said, "You spoke to him and he turned you down. I know that can hurt but you two are both married."

Monique simply shook her head. "I spent the entire evening with my husband. I never even looked away from him once."

Rupert was right in saying that Monique never found out who he was. What Henry did not understand was what game was her brother playing?